Portfolio Research

Here I take a look at some portfolios that inspire me and that I want to critique.  Doing so can direct me with further knowledge on my own portfolio and how to formulate one. 

Above here is Mr. Bingo's portfolio website.  His work is considered not for the faint hearted full of funky illustrations and bad language!  I saw Mr Bingo's presentation at Reasons to be Creative.  First off, his portfolio site isn't the best of appealing as the on going links puts me off.  Each link demonstrates each project and is branding labelled in black down the left hand side.  His latest creation is in the middle and couldn't be more noticeable.  

Above here is Wild Dog design.  The agency based in Brighton.  Firstly is comes across a lot more appealing to me as their work is straight on the homepage and you don't have to go off and navigate ti find it.  I think it's all about first impressions and having you're work already on display to see as the first thing helps a lot and this is what I would like for mine as for my reasons just stated.  The background is white and this makes the text easily readable.  There is a main menu with other menus coming off of it to make navigation easy.

Above here is my favourite by far.  As you can see this is the homepage of Misfit Design.  When the page loads up, a flowing ink animation fills the page as if you are watching ink in water.  This is very clever and I like the first impressions of the site.  It makes it feel creative and different.  The whole page here if full of the animation with no borders making the website appear larger.  They have the logo centred.  The site has been created using the parallax effect and this is such an effective way of scrolling down seeing the page flow.  The site has social media linked icons at the top right of the page so their social links are easily available.

Above here is a demonstration of the parallax effect as you scroll the project become available.

And here too.

Their social links look like this and highlight and move when your mouse is hovering over them.  This creates the ease of use which is what you want.

Again with this site, the projects are already presented as soon as you get onto the site making it easily viewable.  The colour here is also very attractive and shoes a sense of welcoming in my opinion.  I like the fact that each project or piece of work doesn't have a border around it and they are all connected.  This wouldn't work if each piece of work were similar colours as they would collide.

Andrew Caldwell is a Digital Designer from New York City who works with UX Design.  His site is very efficient.  His choice of font reminds me of Apple's on their sit and works perfectly against the re-ocurring white background.  

As you scroll down you are again faced with the parallax effect.  The background flows to black but the writing here isn't exactly that readable.

An ongoing important fact is that the website is responsive.  Every element narrows down into single columns efficiently for smartphone users.  The information is still easily readable.